Tool | Game Client Automation Interface
Game interface for PC and Xbox. Allows non-technical users to run scripts and debug menu commands on the IP-specified device, through PowerShell. This allowed us to make easily-usable tools for other teams, particularly for rendering assets in-game, validating content, and doing live demonstrations.
Applied Skills: PowerShell & WinForms | IronPython & C#
I built this on top of the ForzaAppFacade interface, which does the bare-minumum 'middle-manning' between PowerShell and the game instance (for PC, at least). My interface allows non-technical users to choose a PS1 script (which contains debug menu commands) from a dropdown, and then execute it on the Forza-installed PC or Xbox at the specified IP. These scripts often incorporated a PyQT or WinForms UI.
This was foundational for us to develop formalized, in-game tools and automation procedures, and it opened up a wide range of possibilities for new tools, particularly for 'A B' comparisons between different platforms/flavors/builds, validating content, and performing live demonstrations. The example shown here, 'InspectWeather', was one of those tools. I made it at the request of the Environment Team, wished to evaluate weather conditions between different platforms and builds.
This is a multi-process, multi-threaded application, so I had to implement a couple of safety features. For example, I had to check whether the game process is responsive, and if it is, whether it's in a game state in which debug commands are actually performable. I also added various fail-safe procedures so as to prevent one unresponsive process causing issues with the other. There were a lot of edge cases to account for, particularly once I started adding signals and multi-threaded UI elements. This was much tricker to get working on Xbox, in particular. In this regard, I used the XBCONNECT application to connect to the device and then XBAPP application to interact with the installed game package.
